Scotland have a better back line than England. England have better forwards than anyone in the world (Cameron smith excluded).

Now that sport England have cut the funding we get I think it's time to do away with the Matalan style England shirt and bring back GB. We could win the World Cup IMO.

Nah, we're fine thanks.

Other than for the obvious idea of building up the game in those areas, I always thought it was a mistake to get separate nations for international games.

However you choose to look at the way the game is run, at its highest level it is basically an English game, and a northern English game at that. Though there are obviously a few "genuine" Welsh and even the odd Irish player, the majority of Welsh, Irish and Scots squads are made up with players on parental or Grandparental qualifications. These are almost always always [northern] English by birth anyway - and in truth go for the other nation for no other reason than they feel they won't get in the England side, but as part of a GB squad they would strengthen it enormously imo.

I've no quibble with a 'home' nations competition, but when playing the big guins of Aus or NZ GB is a stronger set up and imo is the only real way we can compete with them.

Maybe we should look at asking the Aussies to send separate Queensland and NSW teams to the World cup?

There's no need - most of the Aussies that aren't good enough for the national squad play for Samoa, Fiji or Tonga

On more serious note, you have to make a decision. Do you want a RL World Cup to consist of 4 or 5 teams i.e GB, France, Australia, NZ and PNG? Because they are the ONLY countries that have their own domestic competitions at any sort of standard.

Surely you don't want to see teams from Serbia or Spain getting smashed 200-0 by New Zealand or GB? There's actually a 'duty of care' issue with such games, because the standard is just so enormous.

So we have 'heritage' players, which enables us to have a 12 or 14 or even 16 team World Cup. By doing so we create a viable competition which attracts sponsors, TV coverage and fans. 463K people watched the last world cup in 2013. Would that have happened with a 5 team World Cup? Because that would be the reality if you eliminate teams like Ireland, Scotland, Wales (and by implication Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Italy etc)?

I don't really disagree with any of that and the financial side is clearly important but, the downside, is that we are left with a two horse race between Australia and New Zealand. From a purely English [or GB] perspective, losing the 'Home' nations and concentrating on GB it does make a 'Home' victory a tiny bit more likely. To be right, the South Sea Islanders do mostly play in Australia or the UK, but they are, at least, 'genuine' born and bred Islanders, unlike the majority of Scots and Irish and to a lesser extent the Welsh who are, however it is dressed up, English.

Incidentally, isn't it strange that NZ, which has no serious league system of its own can still be one of the 'big two'?

There is a strong club scene in Auckland which feeds into the Warriors, but whilst they might not have a strong domestic competition there are over a 100 Kiwi qualified players in the NRL, which is by some way stronger than Super League. More to the point most young NZ'ers have learnt to pass and catch before they learn to walk!

We will never have a decent England or GB side until the RL get a grip of the SL, realistically only the top 8 teams will have the quality to pick a home side from even then if you exclude the overseas players and other non eligible players its about down to 6 teams.
If the RL get their way and get Toronto in its even less. RL are killing this great game of ours.

GB/Ingurland doesn't matter. We'll never beat the Aussies when it matters.

Hasn't happened for over 40 years. It's never going to change.

Sburgess having a pop at the ref post-match says it all. Well beaten and unlikely to change whilst there are holes in s.

Well, yeah - never is a long time, but I tend to agree.

mentality. Pure and simple. The key men on the field for Australia (well, pretty much all of them) know what to do, and 95% of the time they execute it. So you spend swathes of time on your own line.

We have players who aimlessly dolly the bal to defenders, who can't find touch from penalties, and who can't catch or apss the ball.

The rest of the time they can do these things passably, but at the level of Australia, they shiit their pants and play like ts. Not all the time, but enough to gradually and comprehensively lose the war of attrition, and then start to deflate and implode.

Seen it all before. Need players who can play up to A-game in a Test match, not ones that can't execute at that level. The basic errors were frankly embarrassing. If I'd been an Aussie, i'd have been loking forward to that game, hoping at last the Burgess boys and the fetef backs would make it into a keen contest, even if I'd still expect Aus to win. The Aussie speccies must have been as mystified and disappointed as the rest of us that England couldn't play IN THAT KEY GAME at a level to even approach competing with Australia, who ended up winning at a canter.

I just assumed the Aussies would go easy on them, because the Kiwis would be a harder game in the final. But they obviously want to defeat everybody, all the time, which is a winners attitude.

On the plus side, the amount of progress Scotland made over the 3 games, was amazing. You could see the improvement across the board for the England game after the Aus game. And then they upped everything again, for the Kiwi game.